Academic Commons

Feedback and Revision: A Self-assessment Intervention

Teacher feedback is a useful tool that can actively engage students in learning and help them improve content knowledge. However, students are generally not motivated to use the teacher feedback. The present study investigated whether self-assessment devices can promote students’ usage of teacher feedback among 5th through 8th graders. Self-assessment is a process during which students monitor and judge their learning process often with tools that provide perspective. The present study hypothesized that a self-assessment intervention utilizing rubrics and guiding questions would help students to successfully revise their work as the teacher feedback intends, accurately predict their performance, become receptive to the teacher’s criticism, and increase their content knowledge. While rubrics contain a list of criteria that the teacher expects students to achieve for each problem, guiding questions ask students to identify areas where they perform well and other areas where they need improvement. The present study took the form of an experiment, with participants divided into two Groups: Experimental (N=89) and Control (N=84). The Experimental Group students used the intervention, whereas the Control Group students did not use the intervention. Every participant worked on solving problems, revising their work, answering questions about the experience, and expressing their preference for the type of teacher feedback in mathematics. The study hypothesized that the self-assessment devices would help students to successfully revise their work as the teacher feedback intends, more accurately predict their performance, become receptive to the teacher’s criticism, and increase their content knowledge. The results showed that the self-assessment intervention helped the students successfully revise their work; furthermore, specific teacher feedback was more effective than general teacher feedback in terms of assisting them to revise. Students who used the intervention demonstrated higher levels of receptivity to negative feedback. On the other hand, the self-assessment intervention showed no significant effect on students’ ability to accurately predict their own performance and it did not produce better mathematics problem solvers. The results suggest that teachers need to provide feedback that precisely locates errors in students’ work and offer specific direction for improvement. Teachers also need to emphasize the purpose of the self-assessment and feedback usage, so that students become more aware of its importance. Furthermore, improving the student-teacher relationship and implementing other forms of self-assessment may enhance the effect of self-assessment on the successful use of feedback by students.